Citywide 'face bombing' will transform buildings and trees

PEMBROKE PINES — Trees, city buildings and even a fire station will come to life this month as a Plantation-based artist applies his signature smiley face to objects throughout the city.

Artist Todd Brittingham will be installing seven whimsical "face bombing" creations on building facades and trees in Pembroke Pines starting Thursday. The installations will continue throughout September and will remain in place until Nov. 22.

The goal of the citywide exhibit is simple: To make residents and visitors smile.

"I like the idea of coming out with a little bit of material and transforming a space — the idea that everything can be something else," said Brittingham of the exhibit. "It'll juxtapose the buildings with something silly."

To create the faces, the 49-year-old artist applies red, black and white felt in the shapes of eyes and a mouth to trees and the facades and porticoes of buildings.

Brittingham stumbled on the idea while visiting the site of a burned down house in North Carolina where nothing but a brick chimney remained standing. He decided to sew up some eyeballs and mount them to the chimney to "activate the space."

"I didn't think anything of it — I was kind of amusing myself," said the artist.

Three years later, Brittingham has recreated similar faces throughout Fort Lauderdale, Miami, the Florida Keys and even on a waterfall in Costa Rica. The Pines installations will be Brittingham's first citywide "face bombing" exhibit.

It's also Pembroke Pines' first citywide artistic showcase, said Jill Slaughter, the city's curator of special projects. Slaughter said she's planning several other citywide projects to bring art to the community so that people don't have to physically visit a studio or gallery.

Slaughter said she was drawn to the way Brittingham's work brought life to inanimate objects.

"I don't think there will be a single person who says they don't like it or who won't smile at it … [It's] a building smiling at you," said Slaughter.

Brittingham's "face bombing" exhibit is a companion exhibit to Studio 18's About Face Portraiture exhibition that begins Oct. 4. Brittingham will display photographs of the smiling trees and buildings at the exhibition.

Brittingham, who started out as a traditional sculptor working in bronze casting, said it's liberating to be able to transform a space in just minutes using $3 worth of felt.

He said a tree installation takes less than two minutes to create compared with labor intensive bronze casting that takes months to complete.